The struggle in the management entrance exams is real because of the cutthroat competition, but chill, you just need one seat. I personally believe the battle for a seat in a top B-School depends not just on our subject knowledge but equally on our morale and mindset. If you are a serious aspirant possessing clear basic knowledge of the subjects, and you’re asked to solve any examination paper say CAT without any time limit, I guarantee that you’ll easily touch the topper’s score. But there is a time limit in the exams. So what changes?
Primarily, pressure builds up and decision making comes into play; this is where most of us struggle. Most of us also struggle with one or more sections. E.g. most of the engineers have a problem in the Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension section but are comfortable with QA; vice versa goes for most of the non-engineers. It is okay to have weak sections, everyone has different stronger and weaker sections, what’s important is to know what they are. For me, the weaker section was Verbal Ability.
I dropped my job offer and started my preparation in the first week of June. I practiced hard to build up speed and accuracy in LRDI and Quant but was always struggling in Verbal, so I had several discussions with teachers after which I completed Word Power and Bluebook of Grammar and started reading The Hindu articles daily.
The test series started and in the first test itself I just scored 64 percentile in VARC but managed to score 90+ in the other two sections, which gave me an overall score that was at the 85th percentile. I was shaken by the result - even after giving my best I was unable to score well and felt my dream of a 99th percentile score getting away from me.
Depressed, I went back to discuss this with my mentors. They were okay with the result said, “Verbal cannot get better in a month." I kept on practicing and tried to find different approaches to attempt the section, but the results were the same. I almost lost all my hope when I scored 70 percentile in future tests as well.
Many advised me to stop focusing on VARC and start focusing more on my strong areas to improve my overall score. But I was still confused, as many of my dream colleges including FMS, NITIE, MDI either look for a balanced score or gave more weight to the Verbal score.
During all these preparation months, I was unable to increase my accuracy but because of practice, my reading and comprehension speed increased. So, I made up a strategy to attempt more questions with the same accuracy which would help me in getting a higher score and it worked in my favor. I was pretty confident in the other two sections as I was now able to score 99+ sectional percentiles.
The D-day came, my CAT was in the morning slot with all the anxiety of new paper pattern and pressure of performing well in the exam as it would add up a gap year in my profile, I went in. Reading one article just before the exam helped me warm up and the VARC section went fine. I secured a 90+ percentile in the section, clearing the sectional cut-offs for IIMs as well as MDI!
Unexpected things do happen, and they did.
Then came my strongest section DILR, solving so many sets and securing a good percentile in mocks throughout the year made me confident in the section or say overconfident. With the mindset of being able to solve any set I made a strategy with the changed pattern that I would solve 2 sets of 6 questions each and a set of 4 questions first and then look for any other if time permits as it only had a sectional time of 40 minutes. I picked up a set with 6 questions and started solving it.
I tried solving it for 15 minutes but still couldn’t complete the set. Mental pressure and anxiety were at their peak. Tried to solve 2 questions with the data I collected and moved on with an anxious mind as just 20 minutes were remaining. I started thinking that this section will make me fail and I will not be able to clear the sectional cut-off for DILR as in the first 20 minutes I had solved just 2 questions. With a mind full of negative thoughts, I started doing other sets and managed to solve the other 2 sets with 4 questions each in the remaining 20 minutes. So, I just solved a total of 10 questions in DILR, I was pretty confident in my mind that I had already spoiled the attempt and will not be able to secure a good percentile as DILR was my strongest.
With a heavy heart, the QA section began, all the anxiety and pressure were so distracting that I could hardly manage to solve questions and the ones I did lacked accuracy. I was able to solve just 13 questions out of which 4 went wrong. Eventually, I secured an overall percentile of 95.44.
The moment I came out of the center, I knew I had screwed up the exam and would not be able to get into any good colleges. Dreams were shattered. I went into depression because I wasted a golden chance and one year as well. After I wasted a week overthinking about the failed attempt, my brother came in and we had a discussion. He said ‘You are an archer, you’ve got 5 arrows even if one goes in vain, you’re still left with 4 arrows! Don’t break the bow. Give your best shot in other exams.’ These words hit me hard.
So, I started preparing for other exams, including NMAT in which I'd achieved a tremendous score of 255, clearing all sectional cut-offs set by SBM-NMIMS Mumbai.
The next shot was XAT on 3rd January, and I secured a 99.32 percentile in it.
The last shot was SNAP on 6th January, and I secured 99.34 percentile in it.
Just keep hustling, efforts never go in vain and you’ll get your desired results sooner or later! ‘You are an archer, you’ve got 5 arrows even if one goes in vain, you’re still left with 4 arrows! Don’t break the bow. Give your best shot in the next take.’
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